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January 19, 2012
An imaginary dialogue between Bruce Ratner and Bruce Bender: how talking up transit (vaguely) might distract from the Ridge Hill case
Atlantic Yards Report
Last March, after the charges surfaced against (now-guilty) state Senator Carl Kruger and lobbyist Richard Lipsky, including a profane exchange between Kruger and Forest City Ratner executive Bruce Bender, I wrote an imaginary dialogue between Bender and his boss, Bruce Ratner.
Maybe they've had another conversation recently.
BB: I have an idea.
BR: I'm listening--
BB: Did you hear about Richard Ravitch? Last week he said that the city's crumbling transit infrastructure is a huge problem, and business leaders lack public spirit, and I quote, "keeping the Bush tax cuts, keeping the government from regulating them and making sure they’re too big to fail."
BR: And what's wrong with that?
BB: Nothing's wrong with that, of course. (Chortles) That's what we do too, more or less. The last part, at least. (Beat) But we need the transit system.
BR: We're an urban company.
BB: Damn straight. We have offices and malls that rely on the subway. And--
BR: --an arena.
BB: An arena that needs subways and buses running well, more of them, in fact. And the LIRR.
BR: Especially the LIRR.
BB: We're not talking about the Islanders yet.
BR: Who said anything about the Islanders?
BB: So this is what we can do.
Posted by eric at January 19, 2012 10:12 AM